1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a memory management scheme and, more particularly, to using a cache memory with a locking feature to directly access the cache memory for data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a large configuration computer system, applications data are transferred from a system memory to computer engines for computation. The computed data will then be transferred back to the system memory before the same set of computed data can be reused by other computing engines. In a large system configuration, there is a hierarchy of memory consisting of a system memory and one or more caches.
Generally, level one cache (L1 cache) is next to a specific computing engine and usually not shared with other computing engines in the system. Level two cache (L2 cache) is usually shared by computing engines in the system. There may be more levels of cache depending on the architecture and/or complexity of the computer system.
Typically, the time consumed by transferring data to and from a system memory becomes a big issue for system performance. If the system design is not well tuned, the computing engine will spend most of the time waiting for data availability.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for directly accessing a cache for data in a computer system.